My Grandfather was in the Home Guard
He had a few interesting stories. One of my favourites apparently ended up - at least in part - on television, and regards two blokes who were manning a roadblock late at night. One of them got caught short and nipped behind a bush. As he disappeared, a man in a Major's uniform appeared in the road.

He was challenged by the other sentry in classic "Halt! Who goes there?" style, with threatening rifle-pointing and bristling moustache.

"Friend." drawls the Major.

"Advance and be recognised!" squawks the sentry in correct Military style.

So the Major advances, and presents his papers.

Now since it was night-time it was dark, so the sentry needed his torch to read the papers, but couldn't hold his torch and his rifle and his papers at the same time, so he shoulders his rifle to take the identification off the Major.

So far, so Dad's Army. But at this point Dad's Army diverges into an "amusing" skit with Jonesy getting all tangled up with the Major.

In reality, what happened was that the Major pulled out his Webley revolver with a chuckle, and said "You know, that was really stupid. If I was a Hun you'd be a dead man."

It was at about this point that Sentry #1, who had nipped behind the bush earlier, returned from his toilet break and found his startled-looking friend being confronted by a stranger who was pointing a revolver at him.

Concluding that this was suspicious behaviour he acted quickly and smashed the Major in the back of the head with his rifle butt.

Apparently the Major didn't wake up for two days and was presumably lucky to wake up at all. Turns out that not only do they not like it up 'em they don't like being belted across the skull either, because he wanted to court-martial them, but apparently the CO gave this idea short shrift.
(richardm, Thu 31 May 2012, 17:13, 4 replies)

This is superbly excellent

( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 31 May 2012, 17:21, closed)

I used to work with an ex-army type,
who had manned a checkpoint in Ireland, during the Troubles. He refused passage through the checkpoint to a man who was clearly slurring his words, and therefore drunk and unfit to drive. When the fella kicked up a fuss, his superior was called over and pointed out that the man wasn't slurring his words, rather he just had a heavy accent
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Thu 31 May 2012, 20:08, closed)

court-marshal? Some kind of tennis umpire?
(MayorBoris, Sun 3 Jun 2012, 9:25, closed)

Oops!
I thought there was something amiss with that last sentence, but thought that it was just that it was a bit clunky. Thanks!
(richardm, Wed 6 Jun 2012, 10:57, closed)

serves him right
your grandad and his mate were only doing what they were meant to do
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sun 3 Jun 2012, 16:07, closed)